As one reporter has argued, this marks a sort of “hidden war” on access to healthcare — and the Trump Administration does not appear to be slowing down any time soon.

But in face of federal threats, state governments can protect their residents’ healthcare.

Indeed, just as state lawmakers can work to restrict access to coverage, they can also take proactive steps to defend it. In Illinois, for example, healthcare advocates, service providers, and patients are advancing legislation — the Do No Harm Healthcare Act — that would require the state legislature to approve of any waiver of federal law under the ACA, public insurance, or Medicaid that reduces coverage or waters down consumer protections. By ensuring that any attempts to restrict access to healthcare would be open to public debate and scrutiny, the bill would serve as a strong bulwark against the Trump Administration’s stealth assault on Medicaid and the ACA.

To be sure, the fight is very much still on in states that have already pushed ahead with harmful health policies. Indeed, advocates have already begun raising powerful legal challenges. But in states where it is politically feasible, preempting these sorts of policies can act as a potent weapon to protect the healthcare of millions.

In the fight to ensure access to healthcare for all, the stakes of state and local level advocacy have never been higher.

In recent years, the affordable housing crisis faced by low-income and working people across the country has captured attention from journalists, academics, and many lawmakers. What has been the Trump Administration’s response?

As federal lawmakers hammer out their priorities for the coming year, it’s worth setting the record straight about the programs that play such a crucial role in the day-to-day lives of millions of low-income households. Here are five things you should know about federal housing programs.

Each month, federal housing programs — predominantly Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 project-based rental assistance, and public housing — help more than 10 million low-income children, seniors, people with disabilities, and working adults keep a roof over their heads and free up resources for them to dedicate on other basic needs.

Cuts to housing assistance will fall hardest on those least able to afford it — and exacerbate racial inequality.

3.Federal housing programs have a key role to play in undoing segregation.

The federal government has a legal and moral responsibility to address and remedy patterns of racial segregation. But as has been well-documented, the government has fallen well short of its obligations and segregation has persisted, leaving communities of color without the same level of access to quality schools, housing, and other critical resources as white Americans.

There are many serious problems with this poorly conceived proposal, not the least of which is that it would produce massive waste, cause hunger and poverty to soar, create a massive bureaucracy, and stigmatize people with low-income.

The Harvest Box is a recipe for waste.

The Harvest Box would force families to receive certain items regardless of their preferences and needs. Children and adults with peanut, wheat, and dairy allergies would still be shipped peanut butter, pasta, and milk products, while people who have moral or religious beliefs that prohibit them from eating meat would also be shipped meat products monthly. Families with children who are picky eaters would not be able to substitute healthy foods that their children prefer.

Much of the media coverage surrounding this issue has misleadingly likened the Harvest Box to the trendy meal kit services like Blue Apron. But the Harvest Box does not contain any of the fresh meat, produce, or other ingredients associated with these high-end services, which typically cost $9.99 per meal. Moreover, these popular services allow recipients to make choices and provide recipe instruction cards with each box. The only thing the Harvest Box would have in common with meal kit services is that the boxes are delivered to your front door.

That is, if you have one.

Homeless families and people who are highly mobile would likely face difficulties obtaining their Harvest Boxes due to frequent moves or a lack of stable housing. According to the Trump Administration, the logistics of delivering a box of food to millions of households would fall to state governments, yet the burdensome cost of doing so is not included in the President’s proposed budget.

This paternalistic idea has already been tried before — and it failed.

The Harvest Box is a half-baked idea premised on false, wrongheaded assumptions about people with low incomes.

The Harvest Box proposal underscores the Trump Administration’s animus towards people with low incomes — especially low-income people of color — and is just its latest attack on the social safety net. Advocates and recipients of anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs must stay vigilant in their defense of SNAP and other basic assistance programs. The physical and financial well-being of millions is at stake.

But we can’t forget about the crucial action happening at the state and local level. At a time when the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress seem intent on exacerbating racial and economic inequality, advocates working in state legislatures and municipalities throughout the country can play game-changing defense and even make significant progress.

Now more than ever, the decisions made at the state and local level will matter profoundly for the millions of people living in or near poverty.

The Fair Tax Now campaign does just that. By amending the State Constitution to allow for individuals with higher incomes to pay higher income tax rates while middle and working class residents pay lower rates, a Fair Tax would help raise the revenue needed to stabilize our state’s finances, repair the damage produced by the budget impasse, and make smart investments in Illinois’s collective future.

HB 4163, the No Salary History Bill, strengthens the Illinois Equal Pay Act to prevent employers from asking job applicants about their previous salary history. Since women earn less than men on average, basing future wages on a worker’s previous pay only perpetuates inequality. By eliminating the ability of employers to pay women less than men because of a woman’s prior, unfairly low wages, the No Salary History Bill will play a key role in the fight to ensure equal pay for Illinois working women.

The Protect Our Care Bill would require the Illinois General Assembly to approve any waivers proposed by the Governor’s office that would affect coverage under the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid. This would ensure that any attempts to restrict access to healthcare are open to public debate and scrutiny.

Protecting the Rights and Safety of Students.

School should be a safe place where our kids learn and grow — not catch a criminal record. Yet too many of our nation’s schools serve as pipelines into the criminal justice system, particularly for low-income students and students of color. As our recent report, Handcuffs in Hallways, shows, police stationed in Chicago Public Schools operate with little oversight and training, disrupting children’s learning environments, jeopardizing their civil rights, and ultimately leaving them at risk of being swept into the criminal justice system.

If police officers are to be stationed in our schools, they should at least be trained so that students, teachers, and families remain safe. SB 2925 — the Safe Students, Trained Officers Bill — would require that all School Resource Officers (or police officers permanently stationed in schools) throughout the state undergo formal training — a crucial step towards ensuring that our schools open up opportunities for children, and don’t put them behind bars.

Curbing Deep Poverty.

Every family should be able to meet their basic needs. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) provides direct cash assistance to thousands of low-income families in Illinois and millions around the country. But in recent decades, the value of the TANF grant has fallen dramatically. In Illinois, for example, the TANF grant is currently just 25% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and has only been increased twice over the past 20 years.

Recognizing the growing and urgent need to address deep poverty, HB 5135 and SB 3115 — also known as the Creating Opportunity for Illinoisans in Need (COIN) Act — would increase the value of the TANF grant in Illinois to 50% of the FPL over three years, index the grant to the cost of living, and equalize the value of the grant across the state. Above all, the COIN Act will help low-income families in Illinois meet their basic needs and pursue economic security.

In addition to policy advocacy in Illinois, with partners in our national networks in states across the country, we are:

Working to ensure immigrant communities can access public benefits and services and not have their status compromised for doing so;

Advancing education equity and preserving and strengthening public schools;

Ensuring the fair housing rights of people with criminal records.

Advocacy at the state and local level has never been more important.

Even as we combat the Trump Administration and GOP-led Congress’s agenda at federal level, we must also push tirelessly at the state and local levels to both play defense and make progress. In 2018 and the years to come, we will continue aggressively fighting poverty and racial injustice — in Illinois and in states all throughout the country. Join us.

As Congress and the Trump Administration hammer out their priorities for 2018, it’s worth setting the record straight about a program that serves such a crucial role in the day-to-day lives of tens of millions of Americans. Here are five things you should know about SNAP.

1. SNAP is efficient.

SNAP benefits are delivered directly to recipients through an EBT card and can be used to purchase groceries at retail stores approved by the USDA. The program is designed to minimize stigma by making it consistent with how other Americans shop for food, affording recipients the dignity to choose what groceries they need and want.

But in its FY 2019 budget, the Trump Administration has called for radically restructuring the way benefits are delivered to millions of recipients, forcing them to receive a portion of their assistance as a box of non-perishable items. Not only is this proposal inherently paternalistic — assuming that the government can better choose which types of food recipients should eat — but it also promises to unleash a whole host of logistical and bureaucratic issues that would fundamentally undermine the program’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Yet SNAP also matters to people living in predominantly white rural areas. In fact, according to recent research, households in small towns and rural areas use SNAP at very similar rates as those in major metropolitan areas.

Cuts to SNAP would thus exacerbate racial and geographic inequalities.

5. SNAP supports millions of working people.

Contrary to the wrongheaded and racially-coded rhetoric peddled by many lawmakers, most SNAP recipients who can work already do. In fact, by ensuring low-income adults have access to enough food to stay healthy, SNAP serves as a work support for millions.

February marks Black History Month — a crucial time to commemorate the invaluable contributions African Americans have made to our country, while reminding ourselves of the importance of ensuring that everyone has equitable access to the resources and opportunities necessary to thrive and live fulfilled lives.

Race equity should always be a pressing issue for all of us, of course, but especially for anti-poverty and equal justice advocates. We simply cannot get at the root of poverty and social inequity in America without addressing racism.

We celebrate Black History Month this year in particularly troubling times.

After riding into office on a campaign tinged with xenophobia, the Trump Administration has not let up in its divisive rhetorical attacks on people of color. And this problematic rhetoric matters, deeply — indeed, white nationalist politics in the United States have been on a surge as a result.

But even as we call out the President’s outlandish comments, we can’t forget about the structural inequity his administration and congressional allies are trying to advance.

So, where to begin? How to advance race equity in the current political climate?

While many may feel uncertain, there is a group of national racial justice warriors pursuing equity thorough an approach of addressing racism at every level it exists. The Shriver Center’s Racial Justice Training Institute (RJTI), a groundbreaking national leadership program, is equipping legal aid and public interest advocates with the skills and tools necessary to secure race equity.

One concept shared with these advocates is the importance of understanding and addressing the “4 levels of racism” — internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and structural — and the way they work together. Internalized feelings are made up of our individual background, experiences, culture and our identity. These internalized feelings and beliefs guide how each of us interacts with others, and the interpersonal interactions are what make up the institutions that drive our individual and collective access to opportunity. These institutions, in turn, create structures that work together to protect the interests of some groups while disadvantaging others, race being just one example.

Advocates in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Washington State have launched statewide race equity initiatives that highlight the importance of addressing race when fighting poverty.

In Washington, for example, RJTI alumni have spearheaded JustLead (formerly the Equal Justice Community Leadership Academy, or“the Academy”) — a year-long leadership development program designed to build a sustainable and deep network of civil legal aid and community-based racial, social and economic justice leaders.

Advocates must also begin by identifying and acknowledging how they themselvesare situated within the institutions and structures they work.

For example, when practicing public interest law in education, I believed that the work I was doing helped families and children as I represented one child after another in school disciplinary hearings both in schools and the juvenile justice system.

However, I must acknowledge that my good intentions did not include identifying the role I played in perpetuating the system of inequity, rather than tackling the real work of addressing the root causes of the disparate and disproportionate outcomes. In truth, I could represent hundreds of students, year after year, spinning my wheels but gaining no traction. Unless and until I understood the dynamics of the history, root causes of these disparities, and the role each of the institutions played in creating this structure of inequity, I was addressing symptoms and not the source.

As we celebrate Black History Month, we must be reminded of the tremendous role people of color have played in making this country great — as well as the enormous amount of work that still lies ahead.

With the support of my fellow race equity advocates, I am inspired and empowered to play my role in working towards a just and equitable society — one where everyone has access to opportunity and the resources needed to thrive.

Food swiped off the table for millions of men, women, and kids. Low-income families left out in the cold amid an affordable housing crisis of historic proportions. Critical health insurance stripped from children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-wage workers. State governments in utter fiscal disarray. Above all, more poverty, suffering, and homelessness; less opportunity and justice; and worsened racial and economic inequality.

Is this the country that most Americans want? According to recent polling, the answer is no.

Yet this is the harsh vision set out by the Trump Administration’s proposed FY 2019 budget released yesterday. While the outline is merely a proposal, and does not have immediate bearing on the recent bipartisan spending deal, it represents the administration’s latest attack on low-income people and people of color — and it must be swiftly and categorically rejected.

The Trump Administration’s budget proposes to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich on the backs of low-income and working people.

We are now at step two: Use the massive fiscal shortfalls created by the tax bill to justify deep cuts to key programs that millions of low-income people rely upon for basic quality of life and a fair chance for upward mobility.

The Trump Administration’s budget, if implemented, would cause massive suffering.

Defunds the Legal Services Corporation, taking access to lawyers away from millions of low-income people and depriving them of the ability to assert their legal and civil rights just as the Administration itself retreats from enforcing those rights;

Budgets are profoundly moral.

More than impenetrable spreadsheets and technocratic documents, budgets are about priorities and values. In this sense, the Trump Administration’s proposal is itself poverty-stricken.

The President’s proposed budget is just that — a proposal, and one that many claim is dead on arrival in Congress. But it would be a mistake to disregard these clear intentions of the Executive Branch, which wields so much power. The proposal must be taken seriously and kept from ever becoming law. Otherwise, our country will be a much less fair and just place.

2. Medicaid makes work possible.

By ensuring that low-income men and women have access to critical healthcare, Medicaid helps people stay healthy and pursue work. Just ask recipients themselves: After Ohio and Michigan expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA, most who were surveyed said that their coverage made it easier to seek or sustain employment.

That’s not to mention, of course, that “work requirements” do nothing to address the barriers to work — from a criminal record to caregiving responsibilities to high regional unemployment rates — that keep many people with low-income from securing gainful employment.

Far from improving employment outcomes, though, work requirements will simply punish millions of struggling men and women for forces beyond their control, make it much more difficult for them to find and maintain work, and ultimately increase poverty and suffering.

Work requirements are based on wrongheaded and racist assumptions about people with low-income.

At their core, work requirements are predicated on the false idea that low-income adults won’t work unless forced to do so — a notion that, at least in large part, is animated by racialized stereotypes of laziness.

Work requirements do nothing to address the actual barriers that keep low-income people from securing and maintaining decent jobs.

Those obstacles include very low educational attainment, chronic homelessness, a criminal record, an undiagnosed mental illness, and domestic and sexual violence. Moreover, many people, particularly women, have caregiving responsibilities for children, older adults, and people with disabilities that make sustaining employment difficult. And then there are structural economic forces — high regional unemployment rates, stagnant wages, and lack of access to reliable, affordable transportation — that serve as barriers to work.

Ironically, by taking crucial assistance away from those who need it the most, such policies actually make finding and maintaining work much more difficult. People of color, who are more likely to face structural barriers to employment and interpersonal discrimination from caseworkers, are hit particularly hard.

Everyone should have access to their basic needs, and that access should not be conditioned on work.

Given the many barriers to gainful employment faced by low-income adults, and our public policies’ failure to address them, it’s unrealistic and unjust to condition basic needs on work.

Advocates around the country must fight at both the state- and federal-level to combat these harmful policies, as well as the wrongheaded rationale and assumptions that undergird them. The financial and physical well-being of millions is at stake.

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an extraordinary advocate who led the way for many advances in civil rights. Yet, the battle against injustice and oppression of marginalized people continues. Indeed, in the face of racially charged rhetoric and policy proposals from our President, it can be difficult to remember the progress that has been made by our forebears.

But in the face of so many injustices, where do we begin? How do we combat systemic racism and oppression that infects our institutions and social fabric? And how do we go about imagining a positive vision of the world in which opportunity and equity are real for everyone?

The future of justice relies on our decency, urgency, and imagination.

Though we are traveling down a long and dark tunnel of oppression, as generations before us did, we must believe in the light of justice at the end. We must have the audacity to envision a just world and a future where everyone has access to a life of dignity and security.

To actively and effectively pursue justice, we must collaborate.

Our fights for freedom and equity are inextricably bound to one another; as Dr. King himself once famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”Furthermore, this work can be isolating, and discouraging when we don’t take a moment to reflect on each other’s work, to learn from each other’s efforts, and collaborate on shared initiatives.

Today, I hope that the legacy of Dr. King will continue to inspire our next generation of advocates. And it should remind all of us that there are many dogs in the fight for justice, and that the future of justice is promising, so long as we continue to pursue it — no matter what the odds.